


Unyielding

by ceterisparibus



Series: Prompts! [14]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awesome Karen Page, F/M, Friendship, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Kinda, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Season 3 AU, how to tag, that's not the focus though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceterisparibus/pseuds/ceterisparibus
Summary: Prompt: Has anyone done a Karedevil rewrite for the scene in 3x03 in the hotel courtyard, where Karen recognizes Matt, chases after him, and confronts him?
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Karen Page, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Series: Prompts! [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334596
Comments: 34
Kudos: 53





	Unyielding

The Presidential Hotel towered above her as Karen shoved her way past the crowds of protestors, the thronging bodies warming the chilled air. She didn’t care about the shouts ringing in her ears, didn’t care about the cold, didn’t care about the agents trying to warn her away with their glares. All she cared about was finding the man responsible for this atrocity, getting him to say something that would let her—and the rest of the free press—hold the federal government accountable.

She honestly didn’t think anything could have distracted her in that moment.

Until, as she showed her press pass, her peripheral vision caught a flash of furtive moment. She turned sharply, ponytail whipping her in the face, in time to see a man walking purposefully—the wrong direction. Not towards the hotel with the rest of the protestors, but into the crowd.

He held a white cane.

“Excuse me,” Karen bit out to the agent she was talking to, whirling on the spot and giving chase. She thought, she _thought_ she saw the man’s head twitch every so slightly in her direction, a movement that felt achingly familiar. But no, she couldn’t assume, couldn’t dare hope to imagine, to project her wishes onto some stranger—

Still. She gave chase.

Aside from that first head twitch, the man gave no sign that he’d noticed he was being followed, except to quicken his own pace. But that could be for any number of reasons. After all, he was blind, or so the cane tip-tapping hurriedly over the sidewalk indicated. But if this was no random blind man, if this was _Matt_ …well, there was no way he could avoid knowing exactly who was following him right now.

“Matt,” she whispered, breath puffing out in front of her. “Matt, stop running and _talk to me_.”

As if in response, the man suddenly pivoted, ducking into an alley between a used bookstore and a dilapidated law office. Which meant he was either about to face her like an actual adult, or he was folding up his cane to parkour away onto roofs where she couldn’t hope to catch him.

If he chose Option Two, she’d kill him. She really would.

But when she burst into the alley after him, there he was—standing in the back where a wall sealed off the other end, facing away from her with his head bowed. She skidded to a stop, gravel crunching under her shoes. “Matt?”

Slowly, slowly, he turned around.

Her heart dropped into her stomach. It was _him_. After all this time, after so many tears and sleepless nights…it was really him.

He looked almost nothing like himself, true: hidden in an oversized green-ish jacket, a saggy cap over his head, eyes shielded by sunglasses that were black as night.

But it was him.

“Matt,” she gasped. “You’re alive.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line and seemed to debate speaking. When he finally opened his mouth, it was just to say, limply, “Hey, Karen.”

“What the hell?” she exploded. “We thought you were _dead!_ We—we had a _funeral_ , you were _under a building_ , we—” She ran out of words and just took a step closer, mouth gaping open.

He tightened his grip on his cane. “Sorry.”

“ _Sorry?_ You—” She couldn’t even think how to finish the sentence, too torn between whether she wanted to hug him or slap him.

“Look.” He sniffed once, a short, dismissive sound. “Fisk is back, and we have to stop him. There’s no way he didn’t orchestrate all of this. He must be planning something. But it’s fine, I’ll take care of it.”

He’d better not be saying what she thought he was saying.

“I know you’re just doing your job,” he went on, speaking low and fast, “but I need you to stay out of it, at least until I—”

“Shut up.” She needed to figure out what to ask him first, and she couldn’t do that if he was rambling on and making her more and more furious. She moved closer; he took a step back, but couldn’t retreat farther unless he wanted to back up into the wall. “How are you even _alive?_ ”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know.”

“I don’t know. I was under the building. I was with—never mind.”

Elektra. She knew. She and Foggy cornered Claire Temple, the nurse whose number he’d kept in his phone even though it had been _months_ since he’d last called her, and demanded answers.

In a way, the answers hurt more than the unknown. He’d given his life to save the city, yes, but that had never been in doubt. Not for Karen. Now she also knew he’d chosen to stay when he hadn’t had to. He’d chosen to stay for Elektra’s sake—the woman he chose over Foggy and Karen time and time again.

“I was under the building when it fell,” Matt went on stiltedly. “I don’t know how I got out. I just…woke up.”

“You’d better not be bullshitting me right now.”

He just shrugged.

“Okay, so you woke up. When was that? How long have you—”

“I don’t know.”

“ _Matt_.”

“Couple weeks, maybe.”

She curled her hands into fists at her side. “Did you call Foggy?” she asked, voice ice-cold even to her own ears.

He hadn’t called Foggy. She _knew_ he hadn’t called Foggy, because Foggy’s first move would’ve been to call her. But she had to at least pretend to give him the benefit of the doubt.

His head lowered in answer.

“And why not?” She knew why. But again, the right thing to do was to give him a chance to explain himself.

But his expression went completely blank. “I need to get back to the hotel. If I can get inside, I can figure out what Fisk—”

“You let us both think you were _dead!_ ”

He stiffened at her raised voice and didn’t even try to defend himself.

She wished he would. She wished he’d give her an argument, just so she could tear it to shreds. “Do you have _any idea_ what it’s been like for us? Making _funeral arrangements?_ I—I didn’t even want to do that, I thought maybe you’d made it out somehow, but Foggy—” Her voice cracked. “Matt, he’s been completely wrecked.”

That, surely, would get to him. Make him stop obsessing about Fisk and remember that he had actual friends, people he loved, whom he’d hurt.

The fact that it didn’t killed her anger like oxygen sucked from the path of a fire.

“Foggy needs to stay out of this,” he said, utterly inflectionless. “If Fisk is manipulating the FBI, he has more resources now than ever. Foggy won’t be safe. You won’t be safe.”

See, she couldn’t even be angry at that. She wanted to be, of course. Anger was safe. Especially if she was angry on Foggy’s behalf; then it would have nothing to do with how badly she was hurt, _still hurting_. Anger was her own shield.

But she couldn’t use it against him. Not now, not when he was so undeniably, irrefutably broken.

Reaching out, she set her hand on his arm. His worn jacket was cold under her fingers. He didn’t react at all to her touch, as if he couldn’t even feel it. “Matt,” she said quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Yeah, it was a stupid question. She tried a new angle. “Where are you staying?”

She couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth looked uncomfortable at her questioning. “…The place where I grew up.”

“Which is?”

“Karen, that’s not—”

“Where is it, Matt? Where are you staying?”

He sighed. “St. Agnes. The orphanage.”

Her lips parted in shock. An _orphanage?_ She knew he lost his dad, knew his mom wasn’t around, but…somehow, she’d always assumed he’d had other relatives to stay with, and neither Foggy nor Matt ever corrected that assumption.

In an instant, in a blink, all the nebulous things about Matt she appreciated only intuitively were suddenly sharpened into crystal clarity.

She took a deep breath. He needed help. Serious help. More help than he could possibly be getting at this St. Agnes place. But this had to be done carefully. He was too focused on the mission right now (probably the only part of his life he felt like he had any control over) to be bothered with concerns over his physical state, much less his emotional state. She couldn’t even trust him to prioritize her or Foggy’s emotional states over the mission. Or else he would’ve reached out.

But if there was one thing Matt would _possibly_ rank higher than taking down Fisk, it was keeping Karen from immediate, physical danger.

She just had to play this right.

“Okay,” she said. “This is great. You can operate out of St. Agnes; it’s the last place Fisk will look. And while you’re doing that, I’ll keep his attention on me.”

He drew back like her words physically hurt him. “What? You can’t—I just told you—”

“I mean, Ellison’s giving me a hard time about the story,” Karen went on, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t make noise. I’ll take a leaf out of Ben’s book. I’ve got enough respect behind my name now that I can publish on my own. Start a blog somewhere. Ellison can fire me if he wants, but the story’ll be out.”

Matt’s jaw visibly clenched. Throwing Ben’s name at him like that was not painless, but it was worth it. The memory of his death would give Matt no choice but to intervene before the same could happen to her.

Sure enough: “I can’t let you do that.”

“I don’t see you stopping me,” she said simply.

“Karen,” he said helplessly, “are you insane?”

“Fisk has to be stopped. I know that as well as you do. And unless you’re gonna knock me out or something, I’m not gonna back down from this.”

“Karen.” His voice shook with suppressed panic. “He will _kill you_.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, I have an idea! Come stay with me.”

He looked a little thrown by that, which was just further evidence that he was not the man he used to be, the lawyer who could always adapt to any tactics the other side tried to surprise him with. “I—I can’t. If Fisk comes after me, I’ll put you in the crosshairs.”

“I’ll be in the crosshairs anyway.”

“You can’t _do that_ —”

“Too bad.” Inspiration struck, and she added: “Too late.”

“What?”

“I’ve already published a piece.” He couldn’t prove her wrong, could he? Not yet, anyway. “It’s not as damning as the stuff I _will_ write will be, but still. It’s just a matter of time before Fisk comes after me. So if you’re so convinced I’ll die without your protection…” She shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to stay with me.”

“I…” Matt looked absolutely backed into a corner, and he obviously hated it. She waited with baited breath to see if she’d left any escapes, if he’d find a way to wriggle out.

But he just stood there, defeated.

“Great. So you’ll come?”

“I…” His fingers tapped anxiously over the handle of his cane. “Maybe. For a little while.”

There. That was all she needed. She could figure the rest out later. “Great,” she repeated.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. This was going to be a disaster. _He_ was a disaster, and she was not qualified to save him. But she _refused_ to let him hide at an _orphanage_ instead of letting his two best friends help him. She was gonna get Foggy, and no matter what happened, they were _all three_ gonna get through this.

And they were gonna get through this together.

**Author's Note:**

> This was really fun! Thank you for the prompt!


End file.
